Plugin: Extract Paragraphs

djsudduth · 2024-02-11T18:42:30.140Z

I've just released my first plugin version of my paragraph extractor. If you're like me you have a lot of varied notes in Joplin covering a number of topics. This plugin allows you to search across any selected notes for a particular topic word or hashtag that is contained within a note's paragraph and the extractor will copy all identified paragraphs from all those notes to a single new note. The original notes are not modified in any way.

For example, let's say I'm doing research on planetary atmospheres, I can search for a specific word like 'neptune' or 'mesosphere' and any paragraph in any note I've selected that contains the word will be added to a single new note. Or, another example is that I have a lot of work notes spanning statuses and projects. I could then use a project name as the keyword and extract/create a single new note of all paragraphs that have any mention of that project from status notes, goals notes, task notes, etc.

The repo is here: GitHub - djsudduth/joplin-plugin-paragraph-extractor: Extract specific paragraphs out of Joplin notes using keywords, hashtags or custom tags

Use

Simply highlight the notes you want to extract paragraphs from and choose "Extract paragraphs from notes"

In this example, the keyword is "hydrogen". Two of the four notes have that keyword within the note. Here is one of those two source notes:

image1093×615 237 KB

When all four notes are selected to extract the paragraphs with that keyword, the new note looks like:

image1093×615 239 KB

Features

Search and extract by single keyword or hashtag (prefix tags supported #, $, %)
Any keyword used is added to the new note's Joplin tags along with any tags used in the source notes
Option to extract the paragraph H1-H6 headers along with the paragraph
Option to extract from bulleted lists only the bullet that has the keyword
Add a title link back to the original note that the paragraph was extracted from
Option to append a hashtag to the new note
Give the new extraction note a custom title

I hope everyone really finds it useful and please suggest any features you feel would add to your use cases!

muzak · 2024-02-11T23:41:34.883Z

Here are some feature suggestions:

Search and extract by phrase
Search and extract from a specific notebook
Option to toggle adding keyword as tag to new note (unless it already exists)
Option to show dialog to enter keyword or hashtag and modify custom note title on right-click or keyboard shortcut by default (I didn't expect setting keyword or hashtag in plugin settings)
Option to use content blocks like the Note Overview plugin does to define, organize, and auto-update new note content

djsudduth · 2024-02-12T02:20:07.249Z

Thanks for the suggestions, @muzak !

Search and extract by phrase - this does work now but I haven't tested it extensively
Search and extract from a specific notebook - great idea, I'll look into that
Option to toggle adding keyword as tag to new note (unless it already exists) - there is no toggle yet for that option - the tag is added in all cases, but I'll add it in the next version (this will be good to tie to extract by phrase since phrases shouldn't be tags in most cases)
Option to show dialog to enter keyword or hashtag and modify custom note title on right-click or keyboard shortcut by default (I didn't expect setting keyword or hashtag in plugin settings) - that is something already in the backlog for the next version
Option to use content blocks like the Note Overview plugin does to define, organize, and auto-update new note content - I'm not familiar with that - I'll take a look

PS - I want to thank @JackGruber for the inspiration!

shikuz · 2024-02-12T04:08:26.691Z

very nice @djsudduth !

I think that Joplin deserves more paragraph-level information extraction, and this is a step in the right direction.

in fact, this is similar in some ways to something that I started working on recently. let's see if it's still worth developing a slightly different variation on the same theme.

djsudduth · 2024-03-09T21:21:45.646Z

Paragraph Extractor has been updated to version 1.1.1

New additions:

A dialog box has been added to allow setting the keyword and tag to use as the paragraph extraction search. The keyword and tag are then saved as default values
You can now just select a notebook and use a toggle to extract paragraphs from all the notes within that specific notebook (right click on either a notebook or just a note within the notebook allows selecting all notes)
Keyword phrases are now supported as well

djsudduth · 2024-04-22T00:14:07.227Z

Paragraph Extractor has been updated to version 1.1.2

New additions:

Note paragraph blocks can now be extracted to a note with the Joplin tag title that matched either the hashtag or the keyword - similar to Logseq linked block references in tag notes
The extraction dialog box was modified to be more clear

djsudduth · 2024-09-28T22:27:20.066Z

My Paragraph Extractor plugin has been updated to v-1.1.5. There are quite a few deep features with this plugin, so I've created a quick 15 min tutorial video on how to use it:

Here are the changes since v-1.1.2

Added option to have backlinks to the parent note embedded at the end of each extracted paragraph
Added extraction of full page if the hashtag and keyword are at the end of the note

Hope you find it useful!